Vittorio Pasteris

Via The Verge

It was over four years ago that OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte showed off images of an XO tablet, and promised it would ship to kids of the developing world in 2010 for $100 each. Obviously that didn’t quite happen, but it turns out both the company and the tablet are finally ready. Not only is OLPC is bringing the XO 3.0 to CES this week, it’s also getting ready to put the slate into production.

The XO 3.0 tablet doesn’t have two screens like the prototype Negroponte described a few years back, but it is built in very much the same way as the XO laptop. It’s been designed by Yves Behar, has a rugged case, and can be charged via a hand crank or solar panel. In fact, OLPC’s CEO Ed McNierney told us that the two-watt tablet can get 10 minutes of runtime from one minute of cranking. (The cranks will be third-party accessories and won’t automatically come with the tablet.)

In terms of raw specs, the XO 3.0 has an 8-inch, 1024 x 768-resolution PixelQi display, which can be read indoors and out, a Marvell Armada PXA618 processor, 512MB of RAM, and will be configurable with either Android or Sugar operating systems. Sugar is OLPC’s own Linux operating system, which was designed specifically for kids. “We designed the XO-3 with an open fireware and with open BIOs so it is easy to support multiple operating systems. Countries can choose between Android and Sugar,” McNierney said.

Via Wired

One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, or the XO, was a flop however you look at it. Instead of just making a cheap, basic machine that could tough it out in its target third-world market, Nicholas Negroponte’s supposedly $100 laptop instead chose to both patronize and confuse with an over-simplified interface. At the same time, as the price rose and dates slipped by, the Rise of the Atom put cheap netbooks within reach of anyone with a few hundred bucks.

Now, Nick’s back, with the XO-3. The new hardware (read: vaporware) will come in the familiar green and white livery, only this time it’s a tablet (surprise, right?). The XO-3 will be showing its 800Mhz, 8.5-by-11-inch face in 2010, when hopefully the technology will exist to build what is essentially a giant iPod Touch for just $75.

Via C-net

The One Laptop per Child initiative seems to have found that imitation isn’t simply a form of flattery, it’s grounds for a new business model.

Speaking at the TED 2009 conference, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the future of the initiative–which set out to put simple, durable, low-cost laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations–is to become, in essence, more commonplace, to “build something that everyone copies,” according to Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from TED.

That copying has already begun, Negroponte said, pointing to the surging popularity in recent months of Netbooks–laptops built by a range of commercial PC makers with a focus on low cost and simplicity of design. “They didn’t copy the right things from us, but they exist,” Negroponte said, per Zuckerman. “We had to build the first laptop because no one else would do it.”

In the early days of the OLPC, the group’s design became famous as the “$100 laptop”–after the target price set for the device–but over time, the price crept up to nearly double that level; the $100 price tag would have to wait for economies of scale that proved elusive. Meanwhile, even before the advent of Netbooks, the price of higher-end laptops kept dropping.

Via Rediff News

The ‘world’s cheapest laptop’, developed in India, was unveiled by Union Minister for Human Resources Development Arjun Singh at the Tirupati temple on Tuesday evening The laptop, jointly developed by several organisations, such as the University Grants Commission, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will be priced at around $10 to $20 (about Rs 500 to Rs 1,000), officials said.

S K Sinha, joint secretary in the ministry for education, giving a demonstration of the device which is smaller than the normal laptop, said that it will need some more fine-tuning. He said the laptop is expected to reach the market in about six months. Arjun Singh had an interaction with the vice chancellors of the remote states like Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur to prove the point that the device will be able to bring about high quality networking among the various institutions of higher education and also increase the skills of e learning of the students in rural areas.

The laptop has 2 GB onboard memory with wireless Internet connectivity. To make it useful for the students, especially in the rural areas, the scientists have made it low power consuming gadget.

….

Read more »

Alle 17.00 ora di Nuova Delhi alla Sri Venkateswara University di Tirupat, Shri Arjun Singh, ministro delle risorse umane, presenta il piano Education through Information and Communication Technology del Governo Indiano.
La chicca è che durante l’evento sarà anche presentato il laptop da 10 dollari , forse più realisticamente da 20

Via SlashGear

A collaborative team between the Indian governments ministry of science and ministry of technology will unveil a super-low-cost computer on February 3rd, as part of the country’s $10 laptop project.  Specifications of the notebook – which is intended for education use – are unconfirmed, but unofficial sources suggest it will have 2GB of memory, both ethernet and WiFi connectivity, the ability to expand the storage and low power requirements of just 2W, all in a small, portable package.

What still isn’t entirely clear is how costs can be brought down to such an extent.  Currently the price is working out to around double the budget per machine – still an impressive feat by itself – but a secretary for education in the Indian government believes that will change once it enters production: “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down.”

Luca Castelli su Lastampa.it

La crisi non risparmia nessuno, nemmeno i computer destinati ai bambini più poveri. In mezzo a tanti colossi dell’informatica che annunciano conti trimestrali in rosso (Intel) e robusti tagli del personale (Lenovo), anche il progetto One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) è costretto a rivedere i propri programmi e a congedare buona parte dei suoi dipendenti.

In un messaggio pubblicato ieri sul blog ufficiale del progetto, che riprende una nota scritta dal fondatore Nicholas Negroponte, One Latpop Per Child annuncia il taglio del cinquanta per cento del suo staff e una riduzione salariale per i restanti trentadue dipendenti. Inoltre, OLPC abbandonerà lo sviluppo della piattaforma di software educativo Sugar, che verrà “affidata alla comunità”.